


Violet at Dusk

by hensday, wednesday



Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Altered States, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27357673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hensday/pseuds/hensday, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesday/pseuds/wednesday
Summary: Geoffrey’s evening starts out far from well, the muggy air hanging low over the city, clinging to buildings and clothes and lungs. The oppressive stillness feels like a bad omen for what’s to come. It only gets worse from there.orDoctor Reid is not quite himself.
Relationships: Geoffrey McCullum/Jonathan Reid
Comments: 9
Kudos: 134
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Violet at Dusk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



Geoffrey’s evening starts out far from well, the muggy air hanging low over the city, clinging to buildings and clothes and lungs. The oppressive stillness feels like a bad omen for what’s to come. It only gets worse from there. 

His desk is swamped in reports, almost as many as he had to go through each day at the height of the epidemic. One not particularly helpful note informs him of a grisly murder scene out by the docks; it sounds like exactly the kind of thing a leech of some sort is most likely responsible for, but his men weren’t the first to find the scene, and whatever did it, it was long gone by the time they got there. And the police sure wouldn’t be looking for undead murderers, nor would they share any details with him. He’d have to go down there and look at the place himself. Maybe break in and have a look at the corpses as well. He’d have to ask if the men had managed to find out which hospital the bodies had been taken to, at least. A headache and a half in the making, he can already tell. 

Among the other, less interesting reports of thankfully uneventful but worryingly numerous skal killings and some follow ups and updates on ongoing investigations, is another note that requires his personal attention—there have been signs and even a sighting or two of one of the bile and plague spewing leeches near a mostly abandoned, boarded up house. It would be easy to cut off escape and take care of the threat, but Geoffrey doesn’t want to risk any of his men getting some deadly disease or being covered in acid or worse. 

With a sigh he gets up from the desk and starts getting ready. Weapons enough to kill anything he comes across, but not as many as he would prefer to have on him, because he has to take an unfortunate detour through Pembroke and he’d rather not get thrown out or arrested. 

He would sincerely prefer not to go anywhere near that particular hospital, but it’s worth it to spare his men an encounter with the plague leech. 

Last time he'd had to deal with one of the things, he had fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how one looked at it, ran into Reid. Against his better judgment he had demanded Reid give up whatever information he had on the abominations. Mostly he’d hoped for any ways to avoid getting a slew of incurable diseases. Surely as a doctor, it would be in Reid’s best interests to stop the spread of any and all such things. 

Reid had grimaced and asked to be allowed to kill the thing himself. _Asked_ , he had _asked for Geoffrey’s permission_ , as if there was a chance Geoffrey could stop him from doing whatever he damn well wanted. 

Geoffrey had no idea if Reid knew no way safe for humans to get close to it, or if he just did not want to give up whatever information he had on that type of leech. He was leaning more towards there really not being any such way, if only because he had stayed close by and watched the place all night to make sure Reid followed through, and so he had witnessed the state Reid had been in after he’d done the deed. A leech could surely not get any illnesses, but the acid definitely hurt him just as much if not more than it did men. Reid had healed unnaturally fast of course, but he had looked very much worse for wear after that incident. 

Geoffrey still has doubts about why Reid had volunteered for the job, as surely he must have known how unpleasant it would be, but that doesn’t stop him from hunting Reid down and telling him about this new leech. Whether Reid meant it that way or not, Geoffrey is absolutely interpreting that one kill as a standing offer to take care of all the plague leeches they dig up, and he’s not intending to let Reid say no to it. Not expecting him to, in truth, because whatever else he is, at least the good doctor seems to always be willing to rid the world of some more of his own kind. 

It’s infuriating that Geoffrey knows him well enough to believe so, and even more infuriating that Reid has managed to construct such a benevolent, such a _human_ image of himself. So much so that even Geoffrey can’t see the cracks in it, even knowing they must exist. 

Regardless, Geoffrey is not above using Reid’s inexplicable need to appear good to get him to do some of Priven’s dirty work. 

The late evening is still too warm, warm enough to make all the usual smells of the city worse. Geoffrey’s lived here far too long to be overly bothered by it, but it still makes the already unpleasant walk to Pembroke slightly more unpleasant, like a pebble in his shoe while fighting for his life – not important, but inconveniently grating. 

He has to fight down an irrational urge to find a way to blame Reid for said inconvenience. 

Then he gets to the hospital and does swear. In his thoughts at least, because the imposing nurse at the front desk is already looking at him with a great deal of distaste and suspicion. Granted, he did once kidnap Swansea, trail blood all over the place and try to kill Reid in the basement, but nurse Branagan has no reason to think he has anything to do with any of that. Well, he sincerely hopes she doesn’t. 

Reid is apparently out—most likely doing his rounds in the neighborhood. Nurse Branagan has no idea when he’s expected to return. There’s another expression on her face as she informs Geoffrey of this, not directed at him, he suspects. She has distaste enough to spare some for Reid as well. Not nearly as much as she should have, but Reid has never fed on anyone in or near the hospital that Geoffrey knows of. Of course with the epidemic it’s been difficult to keep track. But none of Reid’s colleagues currently have reason to suspect him of anything but being a chronic night owl. 

Geoffrey thanks her for the information and leaves. 

So, _most likely_ doing his rounds. Meaning the nurse has no clue where Reid is or what he might be doing. 

With a look around to make sure the nurse isn’t paying too much attention to his exit, Geoffrey doubles back and slinks around the busy front hall and then up the stairs before anyone can take note of him going anywhere he shouldn’t. 

Unfortunately Reid’s office is empty. Geoffrey picks the lock, steps inside and closes the door behind himself before anyone notices him. The whole floor is as quiet as downstairs is loud and crowded. 

Geoffrey’s eyes dart around the room to make sure he really is alone there—he’d half expected to find Reid had just gone up through the broken balcony door, foregoing unneeded attention from the rest of the staff. Then he takes a slow, much more careful look around. Even when he’d come here for Swansea and lured Reid down into a fight he’d expected to be… not easy, but definitely not as impossibly difficult, even then Geoffrey had not seen the inside of Reid’s office. He hadn’t had any reason to, after all, the proof of Reid’s guilt had seemed ironclad at the time. If proof were even necessary to put down a leech. 

So Geoffrey hasn’t had the chance to rifle through Reid’s possessions before. 

He does so carefully now, making a slow circle around the room, touching as little as possible. Though why the hell not? Reid will surely know who’s intruded into his lair when he comes back. There is nothing particularly suspicious on display, except perhaps an excessive amount of books and articles on the subject of blood. By now Geoffrey has looked up enough about Reid to know that obsession was there long before Reid became a blood drinker. 

There are bottles and slides and carefully labeled glass vials of blood and suspicious mixtures. None of it looks fresh. And next to all that are journals with notes made in unexpectedly neat hand. Geoffrey leafs through the one that’s left open. It’s half-filled with medical notes and some sketches of blood vessels and more things that mean nothing to him. It has nothing to do with leeches, as far as he can tell, unless it’s written in code. 

The next two he idly flips through are the same. Figures that Reid wouldn’t keep anything like that around in plain sight in his office, where any number of people who understand sciences far better than Geoffrey could walk in. 

He picks up the last of the journals from the desk and finally looks at the corner of the room with the thin medical bed. It doesn’t look homey or private at all—barely more comfortable than a regular medical bed downstairs, and only by the virtue of being here in this room and not in a crowded ward alongside a dozen other such beds. And still Geoffrey feels like he’s intruding on something when he looks at it. The sheets are barely rumpled enough to show that Reid does indeed sleep here at least some of the time. 

_At least it’s not a coffin_ , Geoffrey thinks and with a smirk imagines how Reid would explain to his coworkers keeping one of _those_ in his office. 

Geoffrey’s already reaching out, fingers just an inch from touching the sheets, when he realizes what he’s doing. He freezes, muscles coiled. There’s nothing to be found here, no proof or information. This is just— 

He jerks his hand away, back to his side and pulls his fingers into a fist so tightly that his knuckles feel like they might start creaking. 

This is an intrusion that has nothing to do with why Geoffrey came here. He knows better than to wonder about the _lives_ of the things they hunt, to get attached. To think of them as human. 

And even if Reid were still human, this, what Geoffrey is doing would be beyond inappropriate. An imposition Geoffrey should not allow himself, not even in the privacy of his own mind. 

But the sheets look just untidy enough that Geoffrey imagines for a moment lying down right there, in Reid’s bed, on his sheets. Would they smell like Reid? And for some reason that thought makes Geoffrey huff an unamused laugh at himself. He hasn’t the faintest idea what Reid smells like, so how would he know? Death, he would like to believe. Death and blood. 

Geoffrey touches the rough sheets with the very tips of his fingers, barely feels it before he jerks away. 

He would prefer to be angry right now, but he feels about as still as the ominous night just outside the walls. Taut and ready to snap, without any idea what he’s waiting for. 

There is nothing here that can help Geoffrey with the ichor or with finding Reid faster. Geoffrey throws the journal at the desk and turns to leave. Then he stops and watches as a loose page falls out of the journal and slowly falls on the floor. Reid is going to know who has pawed all his things, there is no reason to pick up after himself, and yet— 

He reaches down. 

He is always, _always_ too curious for his own good about the damned leech. Why this one? Why is it always _Reid_? 

Geoffrey picks up the page, turns it over and— 

Well. 

Maybe he isn’t the only one too curious. It’s a sketch, but a sketch of a man instead of some medical specimen. Geoffrey would say it’s like looking in a mirror, but no mirror he’s seen has been quite as flattering. 

He can’t tell what it is he feels. Anger, maybe, but the kind where he wants to shake Reid by his neatly ironed lapels and shout _why_ in his face until he gets some kind of answer that quenches his confusion. Until Reid stops being something other than he is, until he stops being wrong. 

Until Geoffrey stops wanting. 

There are faint voices in the hallway, so Geoffrey leaves down the ladder outside the window that he’s certain Reid uses to get in and out of the hospital unnoticed. He leaves the portrait on Reid’s desk, atop the small pile of journals. His imagination doesn’t quite extend to what Reid’s reaction to that might be. He has no idea what he wants it to be either. Will _Reid_ finally unearth some deep vein of anger? 

He should hope not, and yet... 

After that pointless detour, Geoffrey goes to check on the site of the previous night’s murder. He’d sent a couple of men to watch the place, but when he gets there, there is no trace of them anywhere. This is the part where the night goes rapidly downhill and the ominous stillness shifts into a terrifying rush of things falling into all the wrong places. Geoffrey can’t even fully say it is by no fault of his own. 

He finds the scene of the crime as described. Even without a body it’s clear this was no regular murder. There are claw marks on the uneven wall next to the bloody patch on the ground. Almost freshly bloody, and not by way of blood spray, meaning whoever clawed that wall did it recently and had blood on the claws already. Geoffrey walks in an expanding spiral from the scene and looks for any trail the monster responsible for this particular atrocity might have left. Leeches are never careful enough to hide from people that know what to look for. Too arrogant. 

In the nearest alley he stops. There’s a trail of blood far more fresh than the day old murder. It looks like someone heavily bleeding has been dragged away. Too heavily bleeding to still be alive, even all else aside. But Geoffrey sent his men here tonight, so there’s a great chance the trail belongs to one of them, or if it doesn’t, that they came upon it before he did and followed it. Either way he can’t just leave it alone. He should gather backup, but by the time he does there will most likely be nothing at the end of that trail. 

With an unsteady hand he smooths his hair down, looks around. He wants to curse, but he does know how to stay quiet enough to sneak up on leeches, even if he doesn’t bother much of the time. No matter how many times he has to, he still hates losing men, hates knowing he’s sent them to their deaths even as he does it again and again to keep the streets from overflowing with blood. He’ll never be as good at that as Carl. But even so, ever since he first picked up a gun, he’s known better than to let the anger of losing people make him reckless. 

He follows the trail. The heaviness of a wrong decision settles over him so gradually he almost doesn’t notice. 

The first issue here is that the blood is already attracting other things. He kills a skal that seems glued to the blood, too focused on it to notice a hunter almost walk into it. That means he has to hurry before too many leeches turn up for the scent of fresh blood. 

After two more turns a sense of dread expands softly across his mind and he finally realizes that the trail has led him very near to one of his own boltholes. An empty room on the second floor of a boarded up house. Geoffrey’s been using it to store some weapons and other supplies for the times he’s in need and too far from other guard’s hideouts. The missing men could have gone there, except this one is his and not the Guard’s. No one should know where it is, or that it even exists. 

He continues with more care, but there is still nothing but the fresh blood. No other clues that could tell him what the hell is going on here. 

Just as he fears, the trail ends at the safehouse. The boarded up door is broken down and Geoffrey tightens his grip on his gun and steps inside. There are two bodies on the floor, both lying in pools of blood mixed with a thick layer of dust. One of them is Henry, one of the missing men. Seems like the trail of blood belonged to him, and that he was dead before he was dragged here. 

The other is a leech so mangled that at first glance Geoffrey can’t tell if it’s an Ekon or a Skal. It looks more likely to be one of the fancy leeches, the kind that can hide among humans, and from the looks of it he more than met his match here. Definitely not Henry, who even alive and well couldn’t have messed the leech up so badly. It looks far more like the handiwork of another leech. Maybe several of them, or just a very rabid one. 

He kicks the leech over, makes sure it is really dead. Then he follows the much fainter trail leading up the stairs. 

He finds the second leech upstairs, in the room that he’s been using as his own, passed out cold on the lumpy mattress. He can tell with certainty that it’s a leech without doing any tests or seeing the eyes or the fangs because it is bloody fucking _Reid_. Of course it is. 

He’s not nearly as badly off as the two bodies downstairs, far as Geoffrey can tell, but he is unconscious and somewhat clawed up, or at least his clothes are. 

Geoffrey stares at him for a full minute from the doorway. 

There’s a leech on his bed. On a bed he has slept in a few times when he was too tired to trek across the city before dawn, at least. To think of the two of them it is Reid that is imposing so rudely. 

Reid doesn’t wake up or even stir from his unnaturally still sleep as Geoffrey carefully takes an inventory of all the damage Reid has suffered tonight. This is a chance to finish him off once and for all. Geoffrey’s gun is in his hand and he knows a single well placed shot would be enough with Reid unresponsive as he is. He could unload the gun into Reid right now, turn around and leave. 

He could. 

Reid is asleep on a bed that is Geoffrey’s if it’s anyone’s. There’s some unexpectedly heated feeling stabbing at his chest, scalding his lungs with uncomfortable persistence every time his mind returns to that. He breathes in, exhales and puts it aside as firmly as he can. It’s not the first time he feels it and it’s as irrelevant as ever. 

How did Reid even find this place? Did he follow the others here? Did he try to save his men or was he the one to paint the street with their blood? Geoffrey knows it must have been the former, and he really wishes he damn well didn’t believe that so readily. Wishes he hadn’t believed Reid when he reported back that he had fought the Disaster and won, or when he promised Geoffrey that Marshall was finally dead and gone for good. Every time Reid sets out to do something impossible to leeches, or plain impossible, and he always succeeds. Geoffrey hates him for it bitterly. 

He sighs and steps inside the room and closer to Reid. Even if he didn’t already have some idea that Reid hadn’t been the instigator of whatever happened here tonight, Geoffrey is too tempted by curiosity as always. He wants to know what took a swipe at Reid tonight. It doesn’t look like the work of hunters at all, and Geoffrey’s almost certain that it isn’t the work of the lone leech Reid mauled downstairs. 

“Wake up, Reid,” he calls out. Reid, the bastard, predictably doesn’t wake up. Geoffrey repeats the words several times with increased annoyance, and when that doesn’t work any better than the first attempt, he sighs and lightly kicks Reid in the thigh. He’s not willing to put his neck any closer to a sleeping leech, not even this one, that’s for sure. 

He tries to repeat the kick, and that’s where his luck completely runs out. Reid’s eyes snap open and before Geoffrey can even fully grasp what is happening, Reid has grabbed him by the leg, pulled him down and pushed him against the bare wall next to the mattress. 

Geoffrey hears his gun skitter away across the floor. He has other weapons, but a second of hesitation is too long against a leech—Reid is holding both of Geoffrey’s hands against the wall with just one of his, and the grip is bruising and so immovable Geoffrey has no way of getting out of it. 

The light is faint, but good enough to see that Reid’s eyes are even more wrong than usual somehow. More red, but not the kind of red Geoffrey is used to seeing on even the more bloodthirsty leeches that don’t bother refraining from drinking as much blood as they can. Reid’s eyes almost glow with the unnatural red. His fangs that he usually hides so competently aren’t hidden at all, rather they are bared at Geoffrey. He struggles against the hold on his arms fruitlessly. Somehow even Reid’s strength seems to have greatly increased. 

“Reid,” Geoffrey says, voice low with anger that often seems to be a single step away when dealing with Reid. “Let go of me.” 

Reid doesn’t react to the order at all. That he doesn’t let Geoffrey go immediately is unsurprising, though not as unsurprising as it should have been. What is very surprising is that Reid doesn’t react in any other way either. Doesn’t seem to have heard Geoffrey at all. 

“Reid!” he tries again, but with no result. 

Far closer than Geoffrey is comfortable with, Reid keeps staring at him, breaths fast and eyes wild, and unfocused. Hell, he looks like he might not be seeing Geoffrey, though Geoffrey is half afraid to think what he _is_ seeing in his stead. 

Geoffrey tries to twist into a slightly less uncomfortable position, and incidentally also a position that he might use to push and kick Reid away from him. He can’t tell if it’s intentional or a coincidence, but Reid, still otherwise unresponsive, presses his whole body closer and traps Geoffrey against the wall more thoroughly. 

With a string of curses Geoffrey tries to struggle, still in vain. He can hear, can _feel_ Reid’s breathing pick up even more. Reid seems to be trying to breathe in Geoffrey’s scent, as if he were dying from thirst. He swallows mouthful over mouthful of air and for a moment Geoffrey has the inane thought that maybe Reid will breathe so fast that he faints. Unfortunately leeches are not very prone to fainting spells. Instead Reid slowly leans closer, and closer, and _closer_. 

And Geoffrey— 

For the first time this night true fear crashes over him. Reid, rabid and bloodthirsty, is so close Geoffrey can feel his much too fast breaths on his skin. Against his throat. 

Any other day, whatever he tells himself, the truth is he would trust Reid to not kill him. What better reason to trust than evidence, after all, and Reid has already proven what he’d do with Geoffrey at his mercy. But tonight, right now—right now Reid isn’t in any kind of control and Geoffrey knows he can’t trust this Reid at all. Whatever did happen tonight, it has robbed him of all his senses. This isn’t Reid the man, this is a starving vampire through and through, and that starving vampire is staring somewhere right below Geoffrey’s collarbone as if he’s looking straight through him. He probably is. 

Geoffrey can feel his own heart pounding as Reid slowly, carefully moves until his fangs rest against Geoffrey’s neck. 

Freezing is something Geoffrey has long since trained himself out of—when in danger, he always always strikes as fast and hard as he can, else he might as well be dead. Now, though, now he freezes. He doesn’t struggle, even though all it would do is help get this over with faster, as the leech seems to be set on taking his time. 

And then he isn’t. Sharp fangs dig into Geoffrey’s skin, break it and press deeper. And Reid does it all slowly, _gently_ , the absolute bastard. As if that makes it better somehow than Reid just tearing his throat out on the spot. 

Only. 

It does feel better. It feels far too good for a monster and far too good for death. Geoffrey feels the pain in his neck and heat spreading from that bite, and Reid’s bruising hold still on his wrists. Reid’s lips press firmly against his skin, and a shudder wracks his whole body, head to toe. 

Geoffrey starts to struggle then. Not that it does anything other than jar the teeth still embedded in his flesh and make sharp jolts of pain race through him, but he has to try. He can’t just give in. Not to a leech and not to Reid. Not even when his mind feels like it is buzzing with too many thoughts, most of them no more than broken syllables. 

Reid does nothing about Geoffrey’s pitiful attempts at kicking and kneeing him somewhere painful, but he does put his free hand on Geoffrey’s throat to keep him still. His fingers curl around it right below where he is slowly drinking mouthful after mouthful of Geoffrey’s blood. 

And Geoffrey—he grits his teeth as hard as he can to keep the sounds that want to escape and spill over his lips. Another full-body shiver races over his skin, and then another and another. 

Reid’s hold on his neck is just tight enough to keep him from moving, accidentally or on purpose both. As seconds, minutes stretch out, Reid starts drawing small circles with his thumb on the side of Geoffrey’s neck. Geoffrey wants to scream and he wants to laugh at how absurd Reid is, even mad with bloodlust. Most of all he wants to lean into it, go lax and let Reid keep going forever, take every drop. He can’t do any of those, so instead he redoubles his attempts at struggling even as he feels heavy weakness slowly weigh down his limbs, and in return Reid’s fingers on his neck tighten more and more until Geoffrey stops. He can no longer draw enough air, heart racing faster than he can count. Some animal panic inside the depths of his mind is shouting at him, but there’s nothing he can do to escape. The edges of his vision darken and even as he knows he might never wake up again, Geoffrey’s mind tries to conjure up images of what this might be like, if Reid was himself and not a crazed beast. 

Reid does smell like blood, is one of his last thoughts. But not death. There’s a hint of some bitter medicine as well. And now Geoffrey knows what Reid smells like, and here they are, together on a bed. For a moment it seems impossibly amusing. Then Geoffrey no longer thinks at all. 

Geoffrey wakes up. 

That alone is a pleasant surprise, when after a few seconds of confusion he remembers what the last thing he remembers from the previous night is. 

Fuck. 

With a faintly trembling hand he reaches for his own neck and is stopped by cloth. Bandages. He almost laughs at the thought of the good doctor carefully bandaging the wound. Damn it. Reid had bitten him, choked him into unconsciousness and then did him the courtesy of bandaging the wound. What kind of a trick is this? 

The room is empty, the same safe room he remembers passing out in, and Geoffrey is grateful for that at least. He has no idea what he would do or say, if Reid was here, but he knows with great clarity that he would regret every second of it. So might Reid, which makes him leaving before Geoffrey woke up a good idea. That, and the room is full of sunlight by way of the balcony door being ripped out of its hinges and nowhere in sight. It’s still morning, but not an early one judging by how high the sun is. Reid must be long gone, holed up somewhere dark. 

At least he didn’t let me bleed out, Geoffrey thinks and then wants to throw a punch at himself. Fuck Reid. Geoffrey closes his eyes and remembers the fangs in his throat vividly. 

He’s had nightmares aplenty that go just like that. They used to be of father and Ian, and then sometimes of friends and others of the guard turned into monsters, but mostly of nameless faceless leeches getting the better of him and killing him, draining him dry. The worst ones don’t end there, don’t stop at his death. 

And then Reid. He has had many, _many_ dreams of Reid doing almost exactly what he did last night. Some after that first meeting in Swansea’s office, and most of them after that disastrous fight. Reid draining him and Reid turning him, and everything in between. At first they were blood soaked flashes of horror conjured up by his sleeping mind. Then he was inexorably pushed to trust Reid and look at him too often and too closely, and the dreams got so much worse. And last night—last night is somewhere in between, and Geoffrey wants to be angry, enraged, full of fire. Wants to burn out the memory of how it _felt_. 

None of the dreams were even close, not even the ones where he knew he wanted it. 

And he remembers how wanting it felt, he knows that now and has to live with the memory of Reid’s fangs in him and Reid’s hand on his throat. 

And that memory makes Geoffrey shiver despite the heat of another unbearably warm summer day, so he sits up and when nothing disastrous happens, gets up on his feet. The pain of the bite is bearable and the blood loss seems far less serious than it felt last night. Geoffrey tries not to calculate how much of his blood Reid swallowed down exactly. Most of all he tries to wipe his own mind clean. 

Geoffrey feels nothing worse than some mild dizziness and a dull throb in his neck, so he finds his gun and leaves. He’ll have to clear out this place. For a moment his mind treacherously reminds him that surely it wouldn’t be so bad to sleep somewhere where Reid could watch over him, could come for him and— 

Curse it all, Geoffrey needs to clear his head. He makes sure the bodies downstairs, now dragged to the side to not be immediately visible to any passerby from the street, are truly completely dead and not likely to rise up come nightfall, and leaves. 

Later, when he’s safely back at the headquarters, Henry’s partner still unaccounted for, and has drank and slept enough to feel almost back to normal, his thoughts turn back to Reid’s crazed state. Geoffrey has seen many rabid blood-crazed leeches, but nothing quite like what Reid was like last night. Even had Reid simply snapped and lost himself to the monster… No, it makes no sense that he would act as he did. That Geoffrey woke up at all and that he woke up bandaged both point to Reid having come to his senses sometime between Geoffrey fainting and the sun dawning over London. 

And his eyes. The wasteful and unnecessary blood trail. Reid’s injuries. There is clearly something else at play. 

Maybe it’s some new leech sickness, but even so, Geoffrey must find out as soon as possible so he can at least prepare and warn his men. They haven’t even finished cleaning up the endless skals created during the epidemic, they need the time to prepare if something worse is about to befall the city. (For a moment Marshall’s blood, poisoned by a Disaster, flashes in his mind. Then he firmly extinguishes the thought. If Reid were poisoned like Marshall, Geoffrey would be dead.) 

If it isn’t that, Geoffrey still needs to know. It’s his own damn fault for letting Reid live, passing up chance after chance of taking him out, so it’s on him to fix whatever has gone wrong. 

And another thing about the night—the trail leading to his safehouse. The leech that had lured Geoffrey there— Or maybe that’s not it. Maybe the trail wasn’t for him at all. How did Reid find the place? Someone had wanted him there, rabid, covered in blood of one of Geoffrey’s men. Only Geoffrey would never have found him if he hadn’t been investigating a murder so close it was almost next door. 

Damn it all to hell, all of that sounds like some twisted leech game that he wants no part of. However he looks at it, it doesn’t quite make sense. He can’t decide if he should be looking for enemies of Reid or of himself. They both have more than enough. 

In the end he has no choice. He has no leads other than the empty house and Reid himself, and he’s not keen to take another pointless trip to Pembroke just to be told to look elsewhere again. 

So Geoffrey arms himself, this time more heavily, as he doesn’t intend to be seen by anyone who would terribly mind. And at night he goes back to the empty house and starts a slow and annoyingly thorough search for anything that might tell him what the purpose of last night truly was. 

He does his best to think as little about Reid as he can. He blames that for being so surprised he almost jumps in place when he follows his investigation down into the tunnels by the docks and once again comes face to face with Reid. 

They both freeze for a few moments. Then behind him a heavy metal door slides shut with a screeching sound followed by a very final thud. 

Reid looks much more aware than he did at the hideout. In fact he looks like his regular self, except for the increasingly visible rage on his face. 

“Ah, gentlemen,” a cold voice rings out in the cavernous room. “I cannot tell you how eager I am to start. To observe the effects on someone like you, Doctor Reid. I’m sure you understand the spirit of scientific inquiry better than anyone.” 

There is a man, almost certainly a leech, standing on a walkway high on the other side of the room. He looks even more unsuited to a stroll through the sewers than Reid. There are several more deeper in the shadows, hidden away. Guards? Geoffrey does not know what this is, but it looks like the trail wasn’t for him or Reid after all, but for the both of them. As is this trap. 

He can’t stop himself from gritting his teeth so hard he can almost hear it. The grip he has on his gun grounds him somewhat. 

“What is this?” Reid asks, his voice deceptively mild. The kind of mild that would make any sane man fear for his life. The leech on the walkway only smiles. 

“The Ascalon Club is rather displeased with your interference. And oh, we mean to make sure you will be too preoccupied to continue causing us trouble.” 

Geoffrey isn’t sure he wants to know what his role here is, but the leech seems the kind to gloat, and stalling might give him, _them,_ time to come up with a plan. So far all Geoffrey has is the unexpected relief that if he has to be trapped in the sewers with a leech, at least it is Reid. 

As the leech truly does fall into a speech of what an interfering bastard Reid apparently is, Geoffrey makes note of all the shadows that look like they might be hiding more leeches. Meanwhile Reid slowly makes his way across the room, closer to the walkway. 

“You’ve hunted your own kind. You will learn what it’s like to _be_ _hunted_.” 

Reid looks ready to jump through a shadow or two, but before he can do so, the leech throws something, and when that something hits the wet ground, a shimmering cloud of dust envelops Reid. Geoffrey swears under his breath. The Ascalon leech looks pleased in a way that spells some disaster. 

“By tomorrow every hunter in the country will be after your head. You will, after all, murder their leader.” 

Geoffrey’s blood runs cold. He looks at Reid’s face carefully and as the shimmery dust settles, Reid’s expression is indeed getting less focused by the second. His eyes are shifting into that same almost glowing red as Geoffrey remembers them from last night. When Reid was rabid and fed on Geoffrey. 

Reid’s breathing picks up and his eyes snap to Geoffrey, and his gaze stays glued to about where his scarf is hiding the bandages on his neck. 

“But of course you might not come back from the madness at all. Either way, it will greatly amuse me.” 

So the madness is caused by some powder and isn’t just Reid losing his grip on the theater he plays every day. Geoffrey wants to shoot the leech looking down on them with interest, but at this distance the leech would almost certainly have enough time to dodge. 

“Reid,” he mutters with some warning in his voice. Reid ignores him just as yesterday and steps closer. 

To hell with it, Geoffrey takes a shot before Reid can get close enough to stop him. The Ascalon leech is so surprised he doesn’t even try to avoid the bullet. With a snarl he jumps from one side of the walkway to the other. And Reid uses that moment to strike. 

He doesn’t strike at Geoffrey. 

With a shadowy blur he’s up on the walkway too and does his best to rip the leech’s throat out without the slightest hesitation. In another moment the guards from the shadows all advance and attack Reid. And Reid does not use any of his unnatural magic, doesn’t call up any shadows or spears made of blood. None of his many tricks, just his claws. 

Reid succeeds in ripping the leech’s throat out and with their leader’s demise several of the remaining leeches turn to attack Geoffrey as well. Seems like without their leader they no longer care much about the plan, only about killing them both. 

Geoffrey draws a blade, aims his gun and doesn’t hesitate. 

Several minutes later there are almost a dozen dead leeches on the ground. Geoffrey is trying to catch his breath, wincing at how tender his ribs feel, when Reid approaches him again. For some reason he expects the madness to be gone, but Reid's face looks wilder than ever. Geoffrey steps back, but there is nowhere to run, not for a human that has no chance of getting up on the walkways that would lead him out of the tunnels. Even if he had somewhere to run, Reid would catch him. 

There are a few moments of stillness where Reid only watches him with his glowing red eyes. Then, just as before, he steps closer. Slowly, unlike when he was dealing with the leeches. Does it mean he might be able to recover from the powder? But no, he very obviously is still affected. 

Geoffrey is out of bullets. He has a blade, though, several of them, and— And Reid had recovered the night before. Not before drinking from him, but— 

He uses none of the blades or stakes; hesitates until Reid walks right into his space and then walks Geoffrey backwards until he has him pressed against the wall. This time he’s not as slow—he just pushes Geoffrey’s scarf out of the way, leans forward and buries his face into the side of Geoffrey’s neck. And then he stays that way, teeth to himself, just breathing. Once again, his breaths are fast and desperate against Geoffrey’s skin, but he doesn’t try to bite. 

_Not yet_ , Geoffrey thinks. 

He stands, leans against the wall, Reid pressed against him and hiding hitching breaths against his neck. It feels— It feels almost the same as the blood drinking had felt by the end—shivers racing across Geoffrey’s skin and all he can do is— 

“To hell with it,” he says, and pulls Reid back sharply by his hair and kisses Reid’s instant snarl, for a moment not caring about the danger. 

The sudden kiss makes Reid freeze up. Reid, mad with blood-lust and drenched in the blood of his enemies, freezes at the first press of Geoffrey's mouth against his, as if even through the madness he can still be so thoroughly surprised. He stays frozen for several moments, unresponsive. Then he growls and kisses back wildly, hands running all over him at first and then tightening on Geoffrey’s hips so much that he knows he’ll bruise. 

It’s exactly what Geoffrey has been trying not to want, wants not to want, but he has it now, and letting go seems just as impossible as holding on. 

It turns out Reid doesn’t need blood to overcome the powder’s hold over him. 

If he’s very lucky, now that he’s had a taste, Reid might strongly dislike his blood. If he’s very lucky, Reid might be forever addicted to it. 


End file.
